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As we are

himself than against his enemies. unacquainted with his provocation, we cannot bring his cafe home to ourselves, nor conceive any thing like the paffions which it excites. But we plainly fee what is the fituation of those with whom he is angry, and to what violence they may be expofed from fo enraged an adverfary. We readily, therefore, fympathize with their fear or refentment, and are immediately difpofed to take party against the man from whom they appear to be in fo much danger.

If the very appearances of grief and joy infpire us with fome degree of the like emotions, it is because they fuggeft to us the general idea of fome good or bad fortune that has befallen the perfon in whom we obferve them and in these paffions this is fufficient to have fome little influence upon us. The effects of grief and joy terminate in the perfon who feels thofe emotions, of which the expreffions do not, like thofe of refentment, fuggeft to us the idea of any other perfon for whom we are concerned, and whofe interefts are oppofite to his. The general idea of good or bad fortune, therefore, creates fome concern for the perfon who has met with it, but the general idea of provocation excites no fympathy with the anger of the man who has received it. Nature, it feems, teaches us to be more averfe, to enter into this paffion, and, till informed of its caufe, to be difpofed rather to take part against it.

Even our fympathy with the grief or joy of another, before we are informed of the caufe of either, is always extremely imperfect. General lamentations, which exprefs nothing but the anguish of the fufferer, create rather a curiofity to enquire into his fituation, along with fome difpofition to fympathize with him, than any actual fympathy that is very fenfible. The first question which we afk is, What has befallen you? Till this be answered, tho' we are uneafy both from the vague idea of his misfortune, and ftill more from torturing ourselves with conjectures about what it may be, yet our fellow-feeling is not very confiderable.

Sympathy, therefore, does not arife fo much from the view of the paffion, as from that of the fituation which excites it. We fometimes feel for another, a paffion of which he himself seems to be altogether incapable; because when we put ourselves in his cafe, that paffion arifes in our breaft from the imagination, though it does not in his from the reality. We blush for the impudence and rudenefs of another, though he himself appears to have no fenfe of the impropriety of his own behaviour; becaufe we cannot help feeling with what confufion we ourfelves fhould be covered, had we behaved in so abfurd a manner.

Of all the calamities to which the condition of mortality expofes mankind, the lofs of reafon appears, to those who have the leaft fpark of humanity, by far the most dreadful, and

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they behold that last stage of human wretchednefs with deeper commiferation than any other. But the poor wretch, who is in it, laughs and fings perhaps, and is altogether infenfible of his own mifery. The anguish which humanity feels, therefore, at the fight of fuch an object, cannot be the reflection of any fentiment of the sufferer. The compaffion of the fpectator muft arife altogether from the confideration of what he himself would feel if he was reduced to the fame unhappy fituation, and, what perhaps is impoffible, was at the fame time able to regard it with his prefent reafon and judgment.

What are the pangs of a mother when the hears the moanings of her infant that during the agony of difeafe cannot exprefs what it feels? In her idea of what it fuffers, the joins, to its real helpleffnefs, her own confcioufnefs of that helpleffnefs, and her own terrors for the unknown confequences of its diforder; and out of all thefe forms, for her own forrow, the most complete image of mifery and diftrefs. The infant, however, feels only the uneafiness of the prefent inftant, which can never be great. With regard to the future it is perfectly fecure, and in its thoughtleffnefs and want of forefight poffeffes an antidote against fear and anxiety, the great tormentors of the human breaft, from which reafon and philofophy will in vain attempt to defend it when it grows up to a man.

We fympathize even with the dead, and overlooking what is of real importance in

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their fituation, that awful futurity which awaits them, we are chiefly affected by those circumstances which strike our senses, but can have no influence upon their happiness. It is miferable, we think, to be deprived of the light of the fun; to be fhut out from life. and converfation; to be laid in the cold grave a prey to corruption and the reptiles of the earth; to be no more thought of in this world, but to be obliterated in a little time from the affections and almoft from the memory of their dearest friends and relations. Surely, we imagine, we can never feel too much for those who have fuffered fo dreadful a calamity. The tribute of our fellowfeeling feems doubly due to them now when they are in danger of being forgot by every body and, by the vain honours which we pay to their memory, we endeavour, for our own mifery, artificially to keep alive our melancholy remembrance of their misfortune. That our sympathy can afford them no confolation feems to be an addition to their calamity; and to think that all we can do is unavailing, and that, what alleviates all other diftrefs, the regret, the love and the lamentations of their friends, can yield no comfort to them, ferves only to exafperate our sense of their mifery. The happiness of the dead, however, most affuredly, is affected by none of these circumftances; nor is it the thought of these things which can ever disturb the profound fecurity of their repofe. The idea of that dreary and endless melancholy, which

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the fancy naturally afcribes to their condition, arifes altogether from our joining to the change which has been produced upon them, our own consciousness of that change, from our putting ourselves in their fituation, and from our lodging, if I may be allowed to fay fo, our own living fouls in their inanimated bodies, and thence conceiving what would be our emotions in this cafe. It is from this very illufion of the imagination, that the forefight of our own diffolution is fo terrible to us, and that the idea of those circumstances, which undoubtedly can give us no pain when we are dead, makes us miferable while we are alive. And from thence arifes one of the most important principles in human nature, the dread of death, the great poison to the happiness, but the great restraint upon the injuftice of mankind, which, while it afflicts and mortifies the individual, guards and protects the fociety.

CHA P. II.

Of the Pleasure of mutual Sympathy.

UT whatever may be the cause of fym

Bpathy, or however it may be excited,

nothing pleases us more than to obferve in other men a fellow-feeling with all the emotions of our own breaft; nor are we ever fo much shocked as by the appearance of the

contrary.

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